WASHINGTON  William Proxmire had a recurring nightmare as a U.S. senator.

Born in Illinois, William Proxmire represented Wisconsin for decades in the Senate.

AP file photo

In it, he was accidentally locked in a bathroom while the Senate voted. As he pounded on the door, he realized that his record of never missing a single vote — which grew to over 9,800 consecutive votes by the time he decided to step down in 1988 — was about to end.

"I love this job," Proxmire said then. "It's been the best life I could have ever thought."

When he died Thursday at age 90, it may have conjured up vague memories for many Americans who pay only casual attention to politics. Proxmire gained notoriety as the originator of the "Golden Fleece" awards, given every month for what he considered the most outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars. One month he might have highlighted a study on cow flatulence, the next a dubious federal building.

Proxmire, who served more than 31 years in the Senate, was a budget hawk long before it was cool, someone who saw the perils of red ink before Ross Perot wanted to tinker under the hood or the Republican revolutionaries came to town. Certainly, he was an anomaly in his own Democratic Party, whose members have only lately started preaching against the ills of runaway spending.

Proxmire ran four miles to work and rarely sat at his desk. He upset colleagues so much when he opposed a fancy new Senate gym that they took away his small office shower. He was both a maverick and a throwback, and not just because of the black-rimmed glasses and well-worn suits that made him look more like a preoccupied professor than a senator.

In an age of multimillion-dollar campaigns, he spent exactly $145.10 on his last re-election campaign in 1982. The man who took his place, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., spent an average of $90,000 a day during the campaign to succeed Proxmire in 1988.

Critics claimed Proxmire could spend virtually nothing because virtually everyone in Wisconsin knew him. Proxmire said that was the point. If you did your job, showed up every day, worked hard, and went home to meet with the people, name recognition and the campaign message would take care of themselves. The people would decide to rehire you or fire you based on that, not on promises they knew you couldn't keep or because you were adept at shredding an opponent's motives and reputation.

Proxmire could admit when he was wrong. He initially fought allowing TV cameras to cover Senate proceedings, for example, because he thought it would turn the body he loved so much into a circus of publicity-seeking politicians. But he later admitted the television coverage was okay.

'Nobody watches it," he said in 1988. "You wouldn't expect them to. It's not really an exciting show."

By the time he left the Senate, Proxmire was not enamored with its ways. Unlike lawmakers who cling to Senate traditions, such as Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Proxmire harped about "archaic" rules designed for 13 states and 1790s-era communication.

He once described the Senate as "a place where somebody stands up to give a speech that nobody listens to, and as soon as he sits down everybody stands up and disagrees with him."

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